A nation emerges

The majestic Angkor Wat temple complex. Blinded, disfigured men, hands (if they have them) out, muttering "land mine, land mine." The elegant, gilded swoops of the royal palace. Half-naked children at play in murky, disease-infested waters. The festivity of dawn in Phnom Penh along the riverwalk. Political corruption and repression. Economic vigor through tourism and expected oil revenues. Staggering rural poverty, low literacy and daunting school dropout rates. A warmth of spirit and serenity. The psychic scars of the Killing Fields and the perpetually stalled attempts to prosecute Khmer Rouge perpetrators.

It may sound like a bromide, but Cambodia is a land of immense contrasts. And after spending a week there last year as part of a journalism fellowship, that was the overriding sense I had - the stark contrasts, the curious disconnects.

What is the real Cambodia? Is it in the ubiquitous cartoon-like "happy painting" Cambodia artwork of French painter Stef? Is it in the silence of a Khmer Rouge atrocities survivor? I guess like all things it's somewhere between, found possibly in the enigmatic half-smile in the slowly crumbling Buddha faces on the Bayon temple in Angkor Wat.

On the road

Traveling to Cambodia as a journalist was not like being a tourist. Excursions to museums, to shop, to stroll along the riverfront, to sit over cocktails at the Elephant Bar or Foreign Correspondents Club had to be squeezed in among official visits.

Don't get me wrong. No complaints. It was a magical, staggering, exhilarating and exhausting week.

The most "touristy" activity was speed-touring the 402-square kilometer Angkor Wat complex of Hindu and Buddhist temples, trying to take in in three hours what locals say takes a minimum of three days to begin to appreciate.

We were literally doing a drive-by of the Buddhist Bayon, the second most recognizable temple in the complex, before we pleaded with the local minister of tourism to stop. Dusk amid the temples was an exquisite reflective moment amid a flurry of information gathering.

In a nutshell, Cambodia is one of the almost forgotten nations of Southeast Asia. Flanked by the so-called Asian Tigers of Thailand and Vietnam, it is like the poor bumpkin cousin of those two dynamos.

Cambodia also is a nation that still shrinks in the shame of its past. In April 1975, as Saigon was falling in South Vietnam, a much less publicized yet sinister piece of history was evolving just to the west. The Khmer Rouge rode victoriously into Phnom Penh on April 17. Within days, it emptied the capital and embarked on a quest to create a pure agrarian state. What ensued was a genocidal campaign that came to be known as the Killing Fields. By the time its reign ended with the Vietnamese invasion in 1979, somewhere between 1 million and 3 million Cambodians had died from executions, disease and starvation.

The shadow of the horror, the shame of it, has left an immense scar on the Khmer heart. And many believe it may take a generation of leaders who didn't live through that time to fully restore the country.

That generation is coming of age and its challenges are formidable.

Still, Cambodia is a nation that would seem to be brimming with potential: for trade with its neighbors, through tourism to the awe-inspiring Angkor Wat, to the rowdy eclecticism of Phnom Penh and to the pristine beaches of Sihanoukville; from oil reserves found in the Gulf of Thailand; from a burgeoning young population ready to put the sad, broken legacy of the Killing Fields behind it.

And yet it seems, for every reason of hope, there is a hidden motive or agenda, for every success, there's a contravening reality. And at the end, there is the Cambodian, his face in that half-sardonic smile. He's seen it all before. He's seen much worse.

During a crowded week, my journalist compatriots and I met with all kinds of officials: United Nations, U.S. Embassy and assorted Cambodian ministry officials. We met commune leaders, garment factory representatives and textile labor overseers. And members of the understated Extraordinary Chambers in Courts of Cambodia, which has achieved only extraordinary delays in its attempts to launch tribunals against the dwindling numbers of surviving Khmer Rouge leaders.

Many of these people were there to tell us a tale of a revitalized Cambodia, a rejuvenated people pulling themselves up from the ashes of the past.

A stitch in time

So we learn about the booming garment and textile business. We learn that workers are unionized, there is a $45-a-month minimum wage and 80 percent of workers make more than that, thanks to the unions. There is international oversight that guarantees protections for workers against child abuse, excess hours, delayed paychecks and substandard working conditions.

About 250,000 workers, mostly women from poverty-stricken rural areas, work in the garment industry. Most send money home to their families, and officials estimate that 2.5 million to 3 million Cambodians benefit from the garment industries.

Most of these protections were put in place through a 1999 agreement in which the United States guaranteed to import a quota of goods in exchange for the improvements.

All good news. Except ... In Cambodia it seems there is always an "except."

We learn that many of the women earning these wages live in overcrowded, substandard conditions. Many have to find outside work, and often this includes prostitution. And this in turn adds to the HIV/AIDS problems in the country.

At its best, the garment industry is notoriously unreliable and transient. Companies look for the best deals and the cheapest labor supplies. Several of the export-quota agreements Cambodia signed have expired, and there is fear that by instituting the U.S.-inspired protections, the country has priced itself out of the cheap labor pool.

Finally, in a theme that seems recurrent throughout the Cambodian economy, the industry is 90 percent foreign owned, meaning they have no reason to remain in-country. The chances for Cambodians to advance in the management in the foreign companies are virtually nil.

Banking on Angkor

Tourism is booming in Cambodia. At the ancient Angkor Wat complex of temples built between the 9th and 12th centuries, the number of tourists has tripled since 2001. In the gateway town of Siem Reap, 17 hotels were under construction when we visited, which boosted to 100 the number of hotels in the town. Another 150 are planned.

The population in Siem Reap has grown from 100,000 to 150,000 since 2002 and created more than 29,000 jobs in tourism. About 500,000 tourists visited last year for the World Culture Expo alone.

Again, seemingly good news. Except there is fear that Angkor Wat could literally sink under the weight of tourism.

Millions of pairs of feet are wearing away the ancient ruins, which tourists are allowed to scamper over virtually unimpeded. Millions of pairs of hands are rubbing away amazingly detailed bas-relief artwork on temple walls. And the water demands of those millions are severely taxing the environment. The water table is being sucked dry and could cave in on itself. Coincidentally, it was failed irrigation that led to Angkor Wat being deserted 500 years ago.

Millions of foreign dollars are and have been spent to build infrastructure and to replenish the water table and meet tourist needs. But studies have showed that the Bayon is sinking into the sandy earth and cracks in its base are widening.

Like the garment industry, tourism is notoriously fickle. And, as in the garment industry, the overwhelming number of hotels and tourist businesses are foreign-owned. Although there are a number of schools in Siem Reap offering classes in hotel management, as of October, not one Cambodian had risen to the level of general manager in a major hotel.

Striking oil

Then there is oil. Estimates of discoveries of oil beneath Cambodian waters in the Gulf of Thailand range anywhere from 700 million to 2 billion barrels, as well as trillions of cubic feet of natural gas. At $60 to $70 a barrel for oil, the spigot into Cambodia could be considerable indeed. Furthermore, Cambodia and Thailand may be nearing an accord to explore for petroleum in an overlapping offshore area claimed by the two countries.

Spread out over 20-25 years, Cambodia could see annual sales in excess of $7.5 billion per year, which is about twice the country's current gross domestic product.

So exciting is the news that the United Nations Development Program issued a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats report that, among other things, cautioned strongly about the so-called "oil curse."

Nigeria is the poster child for such a negative outcome. With $29 billion in oil exports in 2004, before prices spiked, Nigeria saw only a meager 2 percent climb in gross domestic production, a number exceeded by the growth in population. In other words, overall Nigeria was becoming poorer.

And then there were these words from U.S. Ambassador Joseph Mussomeli, reported in the International Herald Tribune, "This will be a watershed event for this country one way or another. Everyone knows that it will be either a tremendous blessing or a terrific curse. They are unlikely to come out unscathed."

How Cambodia will handle its possible windfall, which could begin flowing into the country as early as 2010, is anyone's guess. Given the nation's history of endemic corruption, the prospects of an oil benefit to the rural farmer may be bleak.

So, of the three pillars that would seem to girder Cambodia's growth, all are shaky at best. And when all three are undergirded by a history of autocratic rule, indifference and corruption, optimism might seem, as philosopher Jeremy Bentham proclaimed, "nonsense upon stilts."

Hanging onto hope

And yet for all that, I couldn't help but find myself buoyed by the ineffable positive spirit of the people: the survivor of the notorious Tuol Seng S-21 prison, who sat next to a Khmer Rouge interrogator and would not lay blame; children in the countryside who flock to visitors with happy faces; students learning English and excitedly talking about their future employment prospects; and educators eager to impart not only reading and writing, but citizenship and civic involvement to the next generation.

I can only hope that hope survives. That when the rest is all cleared away, there is still that.

When I think about Cambodia, I find myself ironically reminded of a line from "The Great Gatsby" and tempted to insert the word Cambodia for Gatsby, and trying not to fall into defeatism.

"No - Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams, that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men."